Fat Gripz – Do They Really Work?

Being involved in Spartan Races, the thought of using a simple product that will speed up my grip strength and put more size on my arms intrigued me. Grip is such a huge part of obstacle course racing. Whether you’re doing the rope climb, conquering monkey bars, or traversing a Z wall, grip strength is necessity. So I had to try these things out to see if they really work.

My friends at Fat Gripz were kind enough to send me a pair of Fat Gripz to try out. This isn’t the kind of product that you can try out for a day or two and be like, “oh wow, I definitely feel stronger.” So I took a couple of weeks to really give Fat Gripz an honest go. First off, I didn’t just use the Fat Gripz for my arms. I used them for any exercise that utilized a straight bar. I used them for curls, but also for bench, shoulder presses, lat raises, etc. The draw of Fat Gripz is that they double the thickness of your bar, which stimulates more muscle activation. They also spread the weight over a larger area on the hand which translates to less imbalances and a decrease in injury.

One of the things I noticed is that when you do biceps curls, it’s super easy to bend your wrists toward you as you curl up, which takes a little bit of stress off the bicep. Fat Gripz doesn’t allow you to curl your wrists in due to the thickness of the bar. This keeps the stress directly on the bicep. Since using Fat Gripz, I’ve felt more of a pump after curls and less stress on the wrists. More blood being forced into the muscle plus more stress on the bicep is the perfect equation for bigger arms. I’ve used these in standing bicep curls and preacher curls with the same effectiveness.

(Notice how the line from my elbow to my knuckles is completely straight, putting stress directly on the bicep)

I’ve also used Fat Gripz on my bench press. This definitely forces you to use a little bit of grip strength. The thickness of the bar seems to perfectly fit in the palm as you lift off the bar. If the bar was any thicker, it would be too big. Grip strength is hard to measure but it does seem that I’m able to lift the same amount of weight with less struggle. The bar was actually more comfortable to bench with because you could feel the weight with the whole hand instead of that centralized weight in the middle of the palm. I’ve also noticed that when I do ring work, I’ve been able to hold a little longer on the rings than I did four weeks ago. Whether I’m doing ring chin-ups, dips, muscle-ups, etc., I’ve been able to spend more time on the rings which means more reps.

My only complaint is that I wish there was a smaller version of Fat Gripz. The grips were too long to put on my hammer curl bar by about a half inch and I couldn’t use them on my dumbbells either. I feel like I could gain a lot with a shorter version that you could utilize with dumbbells. I could literally use them for every exercise that uses a bar. Imagine the gainz!!!!

I’ve been using my Fat Gripz for about four weeks now and I’ve already had an increase in standing barbell curls, preacher curls, and hammer curls. Is this a natural progression of weight increase due to training? Maybe. But I really do feel a difference when using these. I’m excited to see how this translates in my next Spartan Race where my grip will really be tested over a longer period of time. I highly recommend Fat Gripz if you’re looking for that little something extra to add in to your workouts. If I can increase muscle size faster, doing the exact same exercises, just by adding Fat Gripz to my bar, I say why not?